In a radical restructuring of the traditional artist/viewer relationship, Weiner shifted the responsibility of the work’s realization to its audience, while also redefining standard systems of artistic distribution. A work such as A STAKE SET can be made or merely spelled out on a museum wall, but it can also be read in a book or uttered aloud. Much of the early work rehearses simple actions involving basic substances—pouring paint, digging trenches, removing plaster—and, like all subsequent examples, are stated in the past tense to avoid the authoritative tone of a command.

The artist’s bilingual text installation at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in 2000, NACH ALLES/AFTER ALL, addresses the multiple realities of objects and their materials coexisting in the same space. For example, in the installation two separate entities—“a clear thing” and “a dense thing”—“reflect the same light,” a point that underscores their difference, but also their inherent similarity. This project follows from Weiner’s interest in the work of Berlin-born scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), whose exhaustive systems of classification inspired the artist to re-examine the ordering of the mundane materials of his surroundings. The title of the commissioned project, NACH ALLES/AFTER ALL, connotes the total accumulation of things with a reference to what might lie beyond (or after) such an aggregation. Weiner intentionally derivates from the common German phrase, nach allem, in order to highlight the nuanced meaning of his work.